Powertech Technology Inc (力成), a memorychip tester and packager, yesterday posted lower-than-expected net income of NT$604 million (US$19.87 million) for last quarter, citing the increasing cost of staff recruitment over the past few months.
Net income for last quarter declined 19.03 percent from last year’s NT$746 million. That represented a quarterly reduction of 33.33 percent from the previous quarter’s NT$906 million. Gross margin contracted 18.29 percentage points to 13.4 percent last quarter from the previous quarter.
“I know investors are disappointed about our financial status for last quarter. The company has encountered staff recruitment difficulty in the past few months,” company chairman Tsai Du-kung (蔡篤恭) told investors in a conference call yesterday.
Tsai said the company thought it would recruit sufficient employees by June, but it was not until July and August that the company hired enough local employees to shore up the orders.
“The costs for recruitment and training rose 2 or 3 percent in the last quarter,” he added.
Looking forward, Tsai said Powertech may face mild inventory correction on mobile DRAM in this quarter. The supply of commodity DRAM and Graphic DRAM remains tight in this quarter, and the situation may last to the first-quarter next year, he said, adding that commodity DRAM might also face inventory correction.
Tsai said that apart from commodity DRAM, the business for Powertech’s other product lines looks positive, especially the strong demand for flash. The company also plans to keep on expanding wafer bumping capacity this quarter, he added.
Overall, Tsai said the revenue for this quarter would be flat and he would still hold conservative forecast over the gross margin for this quarter.
“The gross margin would depend on the utilization and learning curve of our new hires,” he said.
Powertech’s consolidated revenues totaled NT$9.34 billion for last quarter, down 12.2 percent from a year earlier and down 1.1 percent from the previous quarter.
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